Events

The 33rd USENIX Security Symposium will take place on August 14–16, 2024, at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The USENIX Security Symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, system programmers, and others interested in the latest advances in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks.

View the symposium program and register on their website: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24

Here's a list of seven papers we are especially excited about:

"Snowflake, a censorship circumvention system using temporary WebRTC proxies" Cecylia Bocovich, Tor Project; Arlo Breault, Wikimedia Foundation; David Fifield and Serene, unaffiliated; Xiaokang Wang, Tor Project https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/bocovich

"Stop, Don't Click Here Anymore: Boosting Website Fingerprinting By Considering Sets of Subpages" Asya Mitseva and Andriy Panchenko, Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU Cottbus, Germany) https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/mitseva

"Does Online Anonymous Market Vendor Reputation Matter?" Alejandro Cuevas and Nicolas Christin, Carnegie Mellon University https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/cuevas

"Fingerprinting Obfuscated Proxy Traffic with Encapsulated TLS Handshakes" Diwen Xue, University of Michigan; Michalis Kallitsis, Merit Network, Inc.; Amir Houmansadr, UMass Amherst; Roya Ensafi, University of Michigan https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/xue-fingerprinting

""I just hated it and I want my money back": Data-driven Understanding of Mobile VPN Service Switching Preferences in The Wild" Rohit Raj, Mridul Newar, and Mainack Mondal, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/raj

"Security and Privacy Software Creators' Perspectives on Unintended Consequences" Harshini Sri Ramulu, Paderborn University & The George Washington University; Helen Schmitt, Paderborn University; Dominik Wermke, North Carolina State University; Yasemin Acar, Paderborn University & The George Washington University https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/ramulu

"GFWeb: Measuring the Great Firewall's Web Censorship at Scale" Nguyen Phong Hoang, University of British Columbia and University of Chicago; Jakub Dalek and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Citizen Lab - University of Toronto; Nicolas Christin, Carnegie Mellon University; Vinod Yegneswaran, SRI International; Michalis Polychronakis, Stony Brook University; Nick Feamster, University of Chicago https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/hoang

DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions around, and also one of the largest.

Join us at Defcon32! Come by our booth, check out new Tor merch, and listen to our talk "Measuring the Tor network" on Saturday, August 10th at 3.00pm.

Millions of people around the world use Tor every day to protect themselves from surveillance and censorship. While the Tor Browser and its protocol are widely known, the backbone of the Tor ecosystem, its extensive network of volunteer relays, is often subject to speculation and misinformation. The Tor Project is dedicated to supporting this network and fostering a vibrant, diverse community of relay operators.

This talk will focus on our efforts to maintain a healthy network and community, and detect and mitigate attacks -- all with the help of metrics and analysis of usage patterns. By illustrating how we collect safe-enough metrics for an anonymity network, we will offer insights into how we identify unusual activity and other noteworthy events on the network. We will also discuss our ongoing strategies for addressing current and future network health challenges.

If you are interested in understanding the inner workings of the Tor network and its relay community and how we keep this vital ecosystem running, this talk is for you.

For more info, visit: https://defcon.org/html/defcon-32/dc-32-speakers.html

The annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) brings together privacy experts from around the world to present and discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. PETS/PoPETs is the premier venue for novel applied and/or theoretical research into the design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies.

More info: https://petsymposium.org/

We are inviting nominations for the 2024 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies! Please nominate your favorite privacy papers published in the past two years (self-nominations are allowed). The deadline for submissions is May 10th.

Please visit the award website for information about the award, submission rules, and past winners: https://petsymposium.org/award/cfn.php

HOPE XV will be the fifteenth Hackers On Planet Earth event.

During April, 10% of all ticket sales go to the EFF! This event promises to be memorable. It is open to all hackers, makers, tinkerers, experimenters, artists, educators and anyone else with an interest in exploring and improving the world we live in and sharing knowledge with others. HOPE is an all-ages event with multiple simultaneous sessions and many other things to do throughout the weekend.

Submissions are now open: https://hope.net/cfp.html

The world’s most important bitcoin voices converge in Prague. This event is aimed at Bitcoiners from all around the world who are familiar with the topics and are looking for deeper insights and to meet like-minded people as well as people wanting to learn more about bitcoin. The goal is to talk about the most important topics, help bitcoin adoption and bring the community together and giving rise to new connections and ideas.

More information: https://www.btcprague.com/

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media launched the first Palestine Digital Activism Forum in 2017, and since then it has become one of 7amleh’s annual events. The PDAF aims to:

• Provide a platform to discuss the challenges that Palestinians face the Palestinian civil society to protect Palestinian digital rights and digital activists working on the Palestinian cause in a positive and constructive manner.
• Provide a space for exchanging social media experiences and expertise in order to develop social media activism inside and outside Palestine and to develop strategies to address the serious challenges and threats faced by digital activists.
• Link the work of local organizations and movements with international counterparts to exchange experiences and to find solutions to the dilemmas they face and ways to cooperate and coordinate actions.

Members of the Tor Project will speak at this event.

• June 4th, 11:30-12:30 UTC: "Regulation & Legislation: Reigning in AI for Human Rights"

Details and registration: https://pdaf.net

ETHPrague is an event focused on the future of Ethereum and potential concepts or applications that don't yet exist.

We want to tackle challenges that could arise in the next decade because we believe Ethereum will play a major role in solving economic, social, and environmental problems. The future is in your hands, anon! You decide whether we end up living in a dark, authoritarian dystopia or a bright, solarpunk utopia.

https://ethprague.com/

More event info here: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-community-day-2024/

When

• Date: May 25th, 2024
• Time: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. (There will be an hour and a half break for lunch.)

Where

• Location: Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Colégio Almada Negreiros, Room 209.

Who

• Organizers: The Tor Project and PrivacyLx
• The Tor Community Day is free and open to the public. Anyone who wishes to join is welcome without any prior need to sign up. If you're curious about Tor, stop by!

Program

• This is a bilingual event: The first half of the event will be in English, the second half in Portuguese.
• We'll have talks from the Tor Project and from members of the community in Portugal.

• Be on the lookout for updates about the schedule and participating projects on our social channels and the Tor forum.

• 09h00 - 09h15: Welcome by Kevin and Meskio

• 09h15 - 10h00: Workshop: How to use Tor by Juga
• 10h00 - 10h15: Break and discussion
• 10h15 - 10h30: Run a Tor relay at your University by Roger
• 10h30 - 11h00: Academic work in anti-censorship by Afonso
• 11h00 - 11h15: Break and discussion
• 11h15 - 11h45: How to report a bug by Emma
• 11h45 - 12h15: Localization Work in Tor by Cacu
• 12h15 - 14h15: Lunch break (Lunch not provided)
• 14h15 - 14h30: Como funciona o Tor por Kevin
• 14h30 - 15h00: Snowflake por Gus
• 15h00 - 15h30: Pausa e conversa
• 15h30 - 16h00: Experiência de correr 30 bridges do Snowflake por Cisco e Vasilis
• 16h00 - 16h30: Pausa e conversa
• 16h30 - 17h00: Serviços de Onion por Rhatto
• 17h00: Encerramento do evento por Kevin e Meskio

Quando

• Data: 25 de maio de 2024
• Horário: 9h às 17h. (Haverá um intervalo de uma hora e meia para o almoço).

Onde

• Localização: Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Colégio Almada Negreiros, Sala 209.

Quem

• Organizadores: The Tor Project e PrivacyLx
• O Dia da Comunidade do Tor é gratuito e aberto ao público. Qualquer pessoa que deseje participar é bem-vinda sem necessidade de se inscrever previamente. Se estiveres curioso sobre o Tor, aparece!

Programa

• Este é um evento bilingue: A primeira metade do evento será em inglês, a segunda metade em português.
• Teremos palestras do Projeto Tor e de membros da comunidade em Portugal.
• Estejam atentos a actualizações sobre a programação e os projectos participantes nos nossos canais sociais e no fórum Tor.

The Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) is an important platform where conversations on digital policy in Africa are shaped, policy directions debated and partnerships forged for action.

This year's theme is Fostering Rights and Inclusion in the Digital Age. Learn more here: https://drif.paradigmhq.org/

DRIF offers a forum where discussions on digital rights, inclusion, and policy are shaped, policy trajectories are discussed, and partnerships are forged for action.

Open Source Summit is the premier event for open source developers, technologists, and community leaders to collaborate, share information, solve problems, and gain knowledge, furthering open source innovation and ensuring a sustainable open source ecosystem. It is the gathering place for open-source code and community contributors.

Visit their website: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-north-america/